Provenance: George O’Brien

ABOUT THE WORK

Son of the future Chief of Police in San Francisco, George O’brien grew up to become one of the most talented and inspiring individuals of his generation. During George’s extremely eventful life, he lived through the San Francisco Earthquake of 1905, was decorated for bravery in the U.S. Navy during WW1, worked as a Cameraman and Stuntman in Hollywood, became a Silent Film Star, transitioned to stardom in sound films, served in the Navy in WW2, became a Navy Boxing Champion, retired from the Naval Reserve as a Navy Captain, and continued in motion pictures until 1964. His duty stations in the Navy included being stationed in and frequently visiting Manila, which he dearly loved, according to his still surviving daughter-in-law, Suzanne O’brien. George O'brien’s extensive film career included working in 43 major budget movies with actors that included Rudolf Valentino, John Wayne (numerous films), Jimmy Stewart, and Directors David Howard and John Ford (a close friend who accompanied him to Manila on at least one occasion). In 1981, George moved from Hollywood, California to Tulsa, Oklahoma due to his failing health, where he bought a home near his son and daughter-in-law. George arrived with 5 ½ tons of household goods, including the Fabian de la Rosa painting that he had bought as a remembrance during one of of his stays in the Philippines. Shortly after moving into his new residence, he suffered a stroke and was bedridden until his death in 1985. Suzanne O’Brien inherited the Fabian de la Rosa painting after her father-in-law and husband’s death. Fabián Cueto de la Rosa began his artistic life as a child at age 10, mentored by his uncle, the renowned portraitist Simon Flores y de la Rosa. He enrolled at the Escuela de Dibujo, Pintura y Gravura in1893, actually winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Art of San Fernando in Madrid but the finances of the Second Academia were insufficient to send him. The following year, he came into the orbit of the Luna brothers, who hired him to be one of the fencing masters at their Sala de Armas on Calle Legarda. (Apolinario Mabini, still able to walk and fence was one of his pupils.) He left the Academy in 1896 during the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution, taking on private commissions for landscapes and portraits, quickly attracting a following among Manila’s alta ociedad, including the Paternos and the Tuasons. He would become one of the most sought-after painters of the generation that followed Luna and Hidalgo. He won a gold for his work “Planting Rice”, alongside Felix Resurrection Hidalgo at the St Louis World’s Fair of 1904. His romantic paintings of the Filipino countryside sparked the imagination of his nephew, Fernando Amorsolo, whose own vignettes set in the sunlit Philippine fields, would become a national obsession “Women Weaving Hats” contrasts the bright exterior light outside the window — the blue sky glimpsed through the missing capiz-shell panes — with the bluish-cool of the workroom that takes on the muted shades of a European drawing room. Five women demonstrate the various phases of hat-making, from the threshing of straw, the weaving, the blocking of the forms and the brushing the fringes. A similar work, dated 1930 and belonging to the family of Felisa Valenzuela Hocson, is shown in the inset. O’Brien was a certified silent-movie heart throb in the 1920s, doing several films for the director John Ford and would become a successful cowboy-movie star with the advent of the talkies well into the 1930s. In the ‘40s, he re-united with old friend John Ford to do films on Asian countries, including Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. -Lisa Guerrero Nakpil